CID charge-sheets 4 Bhopal officers for LeT operative’s passport

The CID on Monday filed charge-sheet against three serving and one retired officer of the Bhopal passport office in connection with their alleged role in the issuance of a fake passport to Sameer Khan Pathan, an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative.

The Crime Investigation Department (CID) on Monday filed charge-sheet against three serving and one retired officer of the Bhopal passport office in connection with their alleged role in the issuance of a fake passport to Sameer Khan Pathan, an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative, the department sources said on Wednesday.

All the accused were posted at the Bhopal passport office when the fake passport was issued during 1997-98. The officers, who have been charge-sheeted include the then passport officer of regional passport office TD Sharma (Raipur regional passport office), former superintendent of passport office AJ Lakda (retired) and clerks at Bhopal office Devendra Jain and Sunil Rajak.

In the charge-sheet, CID has claimed that during investigation it was found that the accused had helped Sameer Khan Pathan and his agent Abu Bakr, a travel agent, to get Pathan’s passport made in the name of Nawab Khan.

On the fake passport, Pathan had visited Lahore in January 1998 to meet his uncle, where he came in contact with LeT and became an operative for the terror group in India. He was also allegedly involved in the Akshardham Temple attack. On October 22, 2002, he was shot dead by the Ahmadabad city crime branch after a brief encounter for allegedly conspiring to kill Narendra Modi.

According to sources in the CID Madhya Pradesh, the department had registered a case against Sameer Khan and his agent Abu Bakr in October 2002 under sections of 420, 467, 468, 471, 120(B) of the IPC and section 12 of the Passport Act.

During the investigation, it was found that Abu Bakr had arranged a fake school certificate and ration card with the help of a school teacher in Sajapur district. The teacher Subhas Vyas and Abu Bakr were arrested in 2012.